Look

by Zan Romanoff

  “God,” Bea says when they’re clear. “That was already too much. I’m so not ready for school tomorrow.”

  “That makes two of us,” Lulu says.

  “What should we eat?”

  “I really don’t care.”

  “Hmmmm.” Bea contemplates their options. “Maybe let’s go to Eataly, and get a lot of snacks?”

  “You know I love a snack tray.” This is a tradition they developed when Lulu first started sleeping over at Bea’s house: going to the grocery store and plundering the aisles for Doritos and Ruffles and Sour Patch Kids to eat while they streamed movies onto Bea’s parents’ flat-screen.

  Eataly is way fancier than the Gelson’s they used to go to, though: Lulu accidentally picks out a twenty-five-dollar hunk of cheese before Bea notices, and makes her trade it out for something less outrageous. “Unless you want to put it on your credit card, princess,” she says.

  Cass flashes in front of Lulu—Cass arguing with her about whether she was a JAP. Cass saying, I could be anything. “I don’t,” Lulu says.

  “C’mon,” Bea says. “If we’re gonna get mozzarella, we need bread or crackers or something.”

  “Sure.”

  “Hey, Molly said you said you weren’t dating anyone. That girl is a gossip black hole, I swear. She sucks in information like it’s her job.” Bea pauses, but Lulu doesn’t say anything, so she continues. “Was she wrong? Or did you and Cass break up?”

  “I don’t know if we were ever really dating.”

  “That sounds like semantics.”

  Eataly is the fanciest grocery store Lulu’s ever been in, but it’s still just a grocery store: fluorescent lit, with aisles of small, brightly colored things. When she and Bea used to do this, Lulu felt like such a grown-up.

  “We’re not talking,” she says.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  Bea pauses them so that she can examine a display of preserved fish. “You aren’t an anchovy person, right?”

  Lulu shakes her head.

  “I was excited about you and Cass,” Bea says.

  “Yeah, well, me too.”

  “It seemed like she was good for you.”

  Lulu balks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It wasn’t an insult.”

  “No, I know, but it makes her sound like . . . vitamins, or something.”

  Bea selects a tin of anchovies anyway, and tosses it in their basket before moving down the aisle. “Well, maybe that’s what you needed,” she says, and Lulu’s still catching up to her, so she almost misses it. “At least you wanted to talk to somebody.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Bea’s standing in front of the olives now, which Lulu knows she doesn’t like. Still, she scrutinizes the labels like they’re important documents. “I don’t know if you know what the last few months have been like for me, Lulu.”

  “For you?”

  “Yes, for me! For me, trying to take care of you, and having you just insist on pretending everything was okay. Which it clearly wasn’t! It, Lulu, it clearly was not.” Bea pulls a jar of black olives off the shelf and then replaces it again. “So when you started hanging out with Cass I was pissed, selfishly, because I missed you, but mostly I was glad, at least, that you were excited about something. I figured, at least she’s talking to someone. Since you wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “I talked to you!”

  “Not about anything that mattered. Not about what was really going on.” Bea has had enough of the olives. She spins to face Lulu now, and that’s when Lulu realizes, Oh, we’re really doing this. In front of a display of imported olives in a fancy food store in a fancy mall. Why not? Where would be better?

  So she says, “You wanted to hear, what? A big gay sob story? A tender coming out?”

  “Jesus, Lulu. I wanted to hear whatever you wanted to tell me.”

  “Well, I just wanted to stop embarrassing myself. Stop embarrassing you. You understand that, Bea, don’t you?”

  “You think you were embarrassing me?”

  “I wouldn’t blame you. I’ve been behaving pretty badly.”

  “God, honestly, that’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said to me.” Bea looks like she’s on the verge of tears. “I love you, Lulu, you fucking asshole. I don’t care if anyone else thinks you’re cool.”

  Lulu doesn’t know what to say.

  “Is that what you think we are to each other? That I’m gonna ditch you for Kiley because she’s dating Owen now?” Bea puts the basket she’s carrying down and cups her hands around her mouth like a megaphone. “Attention!” she shouts. The other people in the aisle look at her, startled. Some just keep walking. “This is Lulu, and she is my best friend,” Bea continues. “My best! Friend!”

  “High five for friendship!” Some dude offers Bea his palm, and she slaps it.

  Bea turns to Lulu coolly. “What I just did,” she says, “was embarrassing. You’re not embarrassing. You’re just a mess, like everyone else.”

  Lulu has never wanted to laugh and cry so hard, at the same time, in her whole life. Who even is Bea? Who is she?

  “Okay,” Bea says. “Your turn.”

  “My turn?”

  “Even if you were embarrassing me,” Bea says. “I wouldn’t mind. So what is it, Lulu? Do you feel the same way about me?”

  In the last six months Lulu has accidentally uploaded a video of herself mid-make-out to the internet. She’s made the first move on a girl she wasn’t sure liked her. She’s stripped off her clothes and leaped into freezing water. She has changed her whole life. Somehow, it’s still hard to curl a hand around her mouth and yell out, “ATTENTION SHOPPERS.

  “BEATRIZ OCAMPO IS MY BEST FRIEND.

  “SHE IS A BETTER FRIEND THAN I DESERVE.

  “JUST THOUGHT YOU SHOULD KNOW.”

  Then she collapses into a ball on the floor.

  “I was gonna say, ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it,’” Bea says, somewhere above her. “But, um. Did I kill you?”

  Lulu realizes that lying on the floor of Eataly is not much less dramatic than yelling in the aisles of one. She gets up and dusts herself off. “Incredibly,” she says, “I survived.”

  A security guard approaches them cautiously. She looks like she isn’t much older than they are, and she isn’t at all sure what the protocol for a situation like this one is.

  “Um,” she says. “I think? I think I have to ask you to leave.”

  * * *

  Lulu has never been kicked out of anywhere before in her life. She doesn’t know what to say to Bea once they’re standing outside. They weren’t even allowed to buy the snacks they’d picked out, so they’re empty-handed.

  The big declarations are over. Lulu feels better, and also like that doesn’t mean that everything is better yet.

  “I’m sad about that mozzarella,” Bea says, after a minute. “It looked really good.”

  “It did,” Lulu agrees.

  They both laugh, and then stop laughing.

  Lulu asks, “What happens next?”

  Bea says, “I don’t know.”

  “Do you have anything else you want to say to me? Before we stop acting like we’re on a CW show or something?”

  Bea smiles, and then sighs. “I do,” she says. “I feel like—like you have this idea that you need to take up less space. That it’s easier for me, and for other people, if you’re just this, like, boilerplate teen dream thing. But if you’re unhappy, and you’re hiding, it doesn’t make it easier. It makes it harder. I know you thought—I know that a lot of people thought your life looked good lately. But for me, up close, it was hard to watch.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lulu says. This time she doesn’t explain for what. She’s sorry for whatever’s making Bea look at her like that—like sh
e’s afraid of Lulu, or for her. “And thanks for sticking around anyway,” she adds. “It means a lot to me.”

  “Thanks for letting me.”

  It occurs to Lulu that maybe Bea has been just as scared to be there for Lulu—no questions asked, no rules, just there—as Lulu is to let herself be loved when she doesn’t understand why anyone would want to.

  Bea nudges Lulu with the point of her elbow. “I mean, someone’s got to keep an eye on you,” she says. “And usually I’m good at it, so I figure, you know. Might as well be me.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  BEA DRIVES THEM both to school in the morning. Lulu is wearing a short black dress her mother gave her for Hanukkah with a quilted black bomber jacket, black tights, and black boots. The sun is so bright when she walks down the driveway that she has to put her sunglasses on.

  “Jesus, Lu, that’s a statement,” Bea says when she gets into the car.

  “It’s just black.”

  “You look like you’re going to a high-class funeral.”

  “Yeah well,” Lulu agrees. “My own.”

  * * *

  The first two periods pass uneventfully; Lulu gets her midterms back and can barely remember taking them. Her grades are fine. Of course they are. You always look fine, Bea had said, and it’s true.

  She’s ready to spend her third period free hiding out in the library, but just as history ends someone knocks on the door with a note for her. It’s from Mr. Winters; he wants her to come by his office for a chat. Lulu considers not going, but she has Cinema Studies later today, so she’s going to have to see him soon anyway. Better to just get it over with.

  * * *

  “I haven’t listened to it yet,” Lulu lies. “Beauty, Power, Danger—I haven’t had time.” She’s hoping against hope that that’s all this meeting is about—that he wants to follow up with her and tell her more about how he knows the Riggs family, and Christine L. Thompson, and whoever else.

  Mr. Winters dashes her hopes, waving them away with a hand. “Whenever you’re ready,” he says. “Though I would especially recommend checking it out now, given what you were up to over the break. Sit down.”

  “What I was up to?”

  “Ryan’s parents told me about the opening,” Mr. Winters says. “To clarify. I’m not the kind of teacher who goes looking my students up online or anything. I mean, I’d hope you know that, but can’t be too careful, I guess.”

  “Have you seen the pictures?”

  “I think a lot of people have,” Mr. Winters says. He squints at Lulu. “Is that a problem?”

  “No.”

  “Are you—”

  “I said no.”

  “Okay!” Mr. Winters holds up his hands, like he didn’t mean to start anything. As if he weren’t the one who brought this up. “Because I just wanted to say that I think they’re beautiful. Ryan’s so talented, but in particular, the pictures of you I thought were just fantastic. Really raw and brave, Lulu. Roman—Ryan’s father—suggested I take a look at some of your previous work, to give some context to—”

  “What previous—”

  “Your Flash posts,” Mr. Winters says. “He sent me a link to an archive, and I only glanced through a few, but I really thought that the images represented a huge step forward for you, in terms of achieving naturalism, and more effectively blurring the lines between life and art. The Flashes were so composed, largely. Whereas there’s—I already said raw, didn’t I? But there is. There’s just something so real about what happens when you put down the camera and let someone else capture you. Are you interested in modeling at all? Because I think you have some real talent, and I’d be happy to introduce you to my contacts. Such as they are, of course.”

  Lulu is totally, utterly stunned. She finds herself at a complete loss for words.

  “I don’t want to model,” she says eventually.

  “I don’t mean to suggest you don’t have a future in photography, being on the creative side,” Mr. Winters says, too fast, like he’s worried he’s offended her. “I just know Ryan was the driving creative force behind this project, behind the camera, so I assumed, but I certainly don’t think that’s all you can—all you’re capable of—”

  “I’m not sure what I want to do yet,” Lulu says.

  “Well, that’s fine too, of course. And truly, if you ever want to talk—you know I’m happy to—”

  “I know,” Lulu says.

  * * *

  Mr. Winters isn’t done with her for the day, though. He starts class with an announcement. “Usually Cinema Studies is a general survey,” he says. “But a general survey, as many of you know, tends to be a general survey of the history of white men.”

  “Mr. W, so woke!” Isaac Levine pipes up from the back of the class.

  “Woke Winters,” Doug Anderson agrees. “Winters woke.”

  Mr. Winters laughs. “I’m not trying to earn any brownie points,” he says. “Or—what is it on the internet now—cookies? I just feel like, as one of the few teachers at this school not bound to get you to pass any kind of standardized test, maybe it’s my responsibility to broaden your curriculum a little bit. And I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how women are depicted on screen.”

  The hand that’s been lingering, loose, at Lulu’s throat tightens its grip. It’s hard not to imagine his smile is directed at her.

  “We’ll still be watching plenty of the classics—don’t worry, no one is taking A Clockwork Orange or The Usual Suspects off the syllabus,” he says. “But I wanted to start the semester with a little clinic on feminist filmmaking. So that when we watch the men, you have something to compare them to.”

  Lulu’s hand is in the air before she can stop herself. Has she ever volunteered a comment in class before? Much less an opinion? But that was Lulu before, she thinks. This is Lulu after. This is scorched-earth Lulu; Lulu scorned. Lulu who isn’t going to get to say what she thinks about so much stuff, so she may as well say what she can, where she can.

  Mr. Winters doesn’t exactly call on her, but Lulu starts talking anyway. “So the women are just, like, context,” she says. “For the work that the men have done?”

  “I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” Mr. Winters says. “I think they’re both context for each other. You’ve been watching cinema made by men—”

  “My whole life, I know that,” Lulu says. “I think we all know that. So, like, I’m just wondering: Why give it so much space, still, here? If you want to teach a feminist film class, why not do it right, and do a whole semester on it, instead of just cramming it into your syllabus at the last minute? Oh, wait, sorry, I know the answer.”

  “Lulu,” Mr. Winters says warningly. You didn’t tell off Doug and Isaac, Lulu thinks. She’s about to get an earful when Kiley interrupts him.

  “Can I ask why you decided to think about diversity just in terms of men and women?” she asks. “What about race? I’ve noticed that, other than our detour into Confederate propaganda early in the semester, we haven’t focused much on filmmakers of color. If we’re making this class inclusive, I’d love to see some racial diversity as well. Especially since most of the women we’re watching this week”—she indicates the syllabus Mr. Winters has written onto the whiteboard—“are white.”

  This earns her an appreciative hoot from Rob Sullivan, the other black kid in the class, and Charlie Andrews, who probably thinks he has a chance with Kiley just because she’s a sophomore and he’s a senior.

  Everyone else is silent.

  “Exactly, Kiley,” Lulu says. “You can’t just shove a handful of films onto your existing syllabus and say you’re making a real change. There’s more than a week’s worth—more than a semester’s worth—there’s so much, um—”

  This is why she doesn’t talk in class: no time to strategize how best to express herself. Woke Winters, she thinks, already imagining what Doug is t
exting Isaac under his desk. Loony Lulu. She’s being shrill. She can’t stop herself. Her voice keeps squeezing itself out the narrowing channel of her throat.

  “But that’s true of cinema in general,” Mr. Winters says, looking at Lulu, then turning to nod at Kiley. His tone is infuriatingly placid, as if to highlight how emotional Lulu is. “There’s no way we can cover everything—even if we picked an incredibly niche topic, let’s say feminist filmmakers just 1960 to present, or black filmmakers in the 1970s, we couldn’t really do it justice in two semesters, probably. The class has always been a survey. I’m just trying to start broadening the survey a bit.

  “I’d love to hear your suggestions for what else should be included. Lulu, Kiley, anyone else. And it might be interesting for you to petition the school for courses specifically on black history, or feminism. They always respond more strongly when they know there’s student interest and enthusiasm for a proposed course.”

  He’s right. He’s reasonable and he’s right. Lulu knows this. She’s the one yelling at him in his classroom. It’s just—it’s so—it’s so frustrating! It’s so frustrating. To have to be thankful that she is being included, that she is being listened to, that she’s being encouraged. To be grateful that someone cares enough to give women a week. To have to be the one who speaks up, who takes time, who goes to a dean’s office and lobbies about her feelings. Boys never have to do that.

  But then, boys don’t have to do so many things.

  Lulu steals a glance at Kiley, but Kiley isn’t looking at her. Probably she’s thinking: White girls don’t have to do so many things.

  She’s not wrong.

  “Lulu’s taken a renewed interest in women’s issues,” Doug says, and his voice is just loud enough that everyone can certainly hear him, but not so loud that it sounds like he’s making a point of it or anything.